LETTER II.

YOU have lately been called to these meetings on pretence of
sympathising, in your several sections, with the people of France; of putting
out addresses of congratulation to their Provincial Government; of
“fraternizing” (that is the cant phrase) with the new Republic. The United, or
rather Disunited, Irishmen (for with them fraternization does not, like charity,
“begin at home”) have been foremost and loudest in their expressions of
sympathy. With whom do you fraternize? On what grounds do you rest your con‐
page: 9 gratulations? The answer seems easy. We
congratulate that noble people who have shaken off the yoke of tyranny; who have
banished their false‐hearted King and his family; who behaved with so much
moderation in the hour of victory, and with so pure a sense of
disinterestedness, that they shot a man only for stealing a silver spoon in the
Palace!

In Burke’s time, when another revolution called forth similar demonstrations from
clubs and societies now forgotten, that great statesman and orator observed,—“I
must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a
blessing, that they really have received one.” Let the congratulators and
fraternizers of the present day consider the saying of one, to whose charge it
can scarcely be laid that he was not a true lover of liberty. Let them also
consider the present condition of Paris—of that Paris which is the heart of
France. Much is said of the tranquillity which reigns there. That great pulse of
the country stands still, and we are told to consider it a sign of health. Paris
is calm! So is a vessel struck at sea, which trembles stationary on the waves
before it is ascertained whether the shock she has received will sink her or
permit her to make for the haven. Paris is calm;—its banks are broken, tradesmen
ruined, the Savings’ Bank (that storehouse of poor capitalists) suspends its
payments, or makes them in a compulsory paper currency. Employment is wanting,
though forced through unnatural channels, by unnatural means. Men’s minds “fail
them
page: 10 for fear.” They stand in a gasping
pause, waiting they know not what; watching their Government, watching those
balloon‐statesmen who have risen to a height they cannot measure, to descend
they know not where; prepared alike to witness the accident of their safety, or
the catastrophe of their fall. What is there in all this to awaken a spurious
and morbid sympathy, a spirit of emulation, with France? What is it that
Englishmen and Irishmen consider it would be worthy and wise to imitate? Of the
moderation shewn by the populace we will not speak; where no foe stood to
confront them, there could be no opportunity for mercy. If the cold ferocity,
which once made the world shudder at such savage antics as dressing the hair on
the severed head of the Princess de Lamballe, is extinct in the breasts of the
French people—of that people whose dreadful women (no longer “Poissardes”) appear in the new character of
“Vesuviennes,” sworn to fire Paris with
torches kept for the purpose—it is indeed a thing to thank God for, if not to
congratulate them upon. May it prove so! May the infant Republic remain
unbaptized in blood! Meanwhile, let us consider the sort of moderation shewn.
There was, a few years since, in Paris, a prince, the heir‐apparent to the
throne. He was brave, generous, noble, a good son, a tender brother. He was what
any of you might most wish your sons to be, and his parents lost him early, as
some of you have no doubt also lost sons. A frightful accident called him
suddenly from this world’s uncertain pros‐
page: 11
pects of grandeur. He died beloved, lamented. In the tumult of the Revolution
the chapel at Dreux was hushed and darkly calm. He lies there, ungrieved by the
exile of those discrowned and aged parents, who shall weep no more by his tomb!
When the widow and orphans of this prince presented themselves in the Senate of
their country—in the Senate where laws are made to protect the feeble and punish
the wrong‐doer—the people, whose moderation you applaud, whose success you would
emulate, gave the telegraphic signal of exile and beggary, by pointing muskets
and bayonets at that defenceless woman and her children. Their property is
forfeit to the state: moderation granted them their lives. There was also in
Paris, some few years since, a princess, sister to that prince. She was a lady
of great genius as well as perfect disposition. She encouraged art, and was
benevolent to the poor. She worked with her hands, as some of you workpeople do,
and made a statue, casts of which many of you must see daily hawked about the
streets of London—the statue of Joan of Arc, one of her country’s heroines. She,
too, died young, and in her death‐hour the innocent hallucination of her
religious mind was that she saw heaven open, and its angels beckoning her to
approach. The people, whose justice you applaud, have seized the rents which
were the property of her husband and her orphan son. They have seized the
fortune of the Duchess of Nemours, which was unfortunately put into the French
rentes. They have seized the Brazilian
fortune which was the dower of Princess
page: 12
Joinville; they have seized the Spanish dower of the Duchesse de Montpensier;
the Condé property, left by the will to the Duc d’Aumale; the property of Madame
Adelaide, bequeathed by that excellent princess to Madame de Montjoie, and other
subjects. If moderation consists in not cutting the throats of women and
children and unresisting foes, congratulate them on their moderation. They have
created a deficit in the revenue, which they vainly attempt to fill by
confiscations and sequestrations, forced gifts, black‐mail levied under the name
of patriotic subscriptions. They have taught the working men to look for a sort
of Utopia of labour, an imaginary system of independence of all mutual
obligation between masters and men—which can never exist—and the expectation of
which will entail the certain ruin of thousands, and the probable martyrdom of
some on whom the French mob now rely. Paris was, beyond most cities, employed in
what is termed industrie de luxe. By banishing
their court, by degrading their aristocracy, by destroying the credit and
fortune of their rich financiers, by expelling foreigners who spent their wealth
in Paris, they have taken the bread out of the mouths of their own artizans. The
rich man’s pleasures were the poor man’s earnings. The large salaries, the
gilded vanities, the toys of pomp, are gone—but with them are gone the fuel for
the poor man’s fire, the loaf for his children’s food. “A bas l’aristocratie!” “Vive
l’égalité!” Good. But where now to find a market for those quaint
devices of ornament, those fanciful traceries, those fili‐
page: 13 gree productions which formed the staple trade of
thousands? Barren and withered as the trees of liberty they have transplanted,
is the prospect of their new and unemployed condition. Even plunder cannot help
them. The rising cry, “A bas les riches!” will
not save them. The circulation of a few rich men may make the
fortune of thousands; the division of the capital, even of many
rich men, would give but a miserable fraction a‐piece to that amazed and
starving mass. Is it on this state of things that you would congratulate France?
Be warned in time. On the false translation of this cant word “Fraternization”
may depend at this moment, in more countries than one, the adverse fate of
millions. Ruined tradespeople, stagnated commerce, an impoverished, economizing,
or absentee aristocracy, may teach thousands to ban, instead of bless, those who
taught them to utter it. You cannot reverse the order of nature. You may stir a
pond, so as to bring sticks, stones, and leaves, to the surface; they sink when
it subsides. Do you believe that the French Government can continue to support
the working classes? Do you believe that the credit of other classes can be
supported for commercial purposes by a compulsory paper currency, which may be
the fictitious representation of funds that do not exist? Friends, I could shew
you the assignats of a former revolution. They
were kept as curiosities, because they availed nothing as payment.

But you will say, “We struggle for our rights; we want equality of taxation; we
want an extension
page: 14 of suffrage; there is still
much to do for the people of England.” I agree with you. I think there
is still much to be done for the people of England, and I think
there is much that will most certainly be done. I desire it, as you do, but I
believe you are taking the wrong road. I believe that the men who have persuaded
you that intimidation, and popular cries echoed from France, will help you to
your ends, not only retard your march, but risk your ruin. You are at this
moment, many of you, placing your lives, characters, and fortunes in the
guidance of men to whom you would not trust the casting up of a ledger or the
management of a farm. They would be incompetent, you think, for
that; and yet you hold them fitter to legislate for you than
the Government of your own country!

In the Commination—read at stated periods in our Church Service—there are these
sentences:—“Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour’s land‐mark!” “Cursed is he
that causeth the blind to go out of his way!” There are land‐marks of the
mind—set there by education, custom, and religion: there is blindness of the
mind—the ignorance which has not been instructed to see things justly. In my
heart I should dread, if I were one of your leaders, the secret echo of that
curse; if, from dishonest vanity or selfish fury, I removed those land‐marks,
and availed myself of that blindness, to lead you to fruitless insurrection. I
should shrink from the memory of those party cries which, when they
page: 15 grow too loud, are only silenced by the filling in of
obscure graves. Pause! there is yet time. Your best friends stand in the ranks
of those you would approach as foes.